Amy Macdonald has unveiled her latest single Statues – the fourth release from her 2020 album The Human Demands. Statues finds the talented Macdonald in typically stirring form, delivering an impassioned vocal over an up-tempo melody which hearkens back to the anthemic feel of 2012 hit Pride. Lyrically, it’s a poignant and contemplative piece; with the Bishopbriggs-born singer reflecting on changing faces in her old neighbourhood, memories of childhood, and getting older: “Don’t change nothing at all/ Streetlights lead me back home/ Am I dreaming?/ Is it morning?/ Am I still here?/ Am I gone?”
Statues follows in the footsteps of a triple bill of single releases from The Human Demands in 2020: lead track The Hudson, Macdonald’s first top 20 hit in her native Scotland in eight years; country-tinged ballad Crazy Shade of Blue; and Fire, a rugged slice of folk-rock inspired by the songwriter’s relationship with her husband, Partick Thistle footballer Richard Foster. Meanwhile the LP itself secured a number #10 berth in the Official UK Albums Chart, and also performed well on the continent – notably in the alpine nations of Germany, Austria and Switzerland which have been a longstanding hotbed of support for the Caledonian troubadour.
Macdonald has spoken of her pride in the record as a whole, telling The Herald that it encapsulated her unique and evolving style. She said “I am absolutely thrilled with how the album sounds. I can’t think of any other female artist who is sounding like me right now. It just feels exciting and it feels new. It feels a bit different and it is something I am really, really, proud of.”
MacDonald recently spoke out on the potentially detrimental effect of streaming services on the consumption of music. In an interview with Daily Record earlier this month she said: “So many said ‘I’ve heard Amy’s new song ‘The Hudson’ on the radio, I absolutely love it and I can’t stop listening to it.’ But then that was it. They didn’t go and listen to the album which to me is just insane. To me if I hear a song I love, the first thing I want to do is do is go and listen to the full album and I get excited to do so. But it seems with streaming we have come into this world where it’s about one song.”
The Scottish vocalist added: “You get statistics from streaming and there are people that will just listen to one song of mine and don’t ever listen to anything else. You get the emails through that say ‘You’ve had 50 people who have listened to this one song in the past week’ and I’m like ‘What the hell?’ To me it’s mental and it’s probably the downside of streaming. It just made it about one song. It’s like people don’t have the respect for albums anymore and it’s just about ‘I’ll just chuck this one song on.’ It feels like we’ve got to a point where music isn’t as valued as it was.”
The singer-songwriter is due to take The Human Demands on the road this year, with ten tour dates across Europe – culminating in a show at London’s Roundhouse on May 6th – followed by an appearance at Glasgow’s TRSNMT Festival on July 11th. Macdonald shares the bill on the festival’s final day with Lewis Capaldi, Snow Patrol and Rita Ora.
